RADIOHEAD "HAIL TO THE THIEF" (Capitol)

June 14, 2003|By James Doolittle, Special to The Morning Call -- Freelance

ROCK The world has become a much smaller place since Radiohead released "Amnesiac" in June 2001, with a burgeoning cottage industry of fear and alienation that makes any number of tracks from the band's last three albums seem ominously prescient. Orwell was off by 20 years, but Radiohead has been so on target that frontman Thom Yorke must be completely wigged out seeing that his paranoid androids have actually been birthed. "Hail to the Thief" is at times no more than an often brilliant recapitulation of the themes that have haunted the band ever since it gave up trying to be U2. Yet unlike the emotionally secluded soundscapes of "Kid A," there is an urgent sense of humanity that permeates this go-around, a probable indicator that Yorke feels less guarded knowing his isolated delusions have become a universal malady. Musically the album is the band's most wildly diverse, an expertly orchestrated mish-mash of pensive piano, angry blips and beeps, and a grand attempt to refocus around the power of the guitar -- both the grandeur of an acoustic ("Go to Sleep") and the roar of an electric ("Myxomatosis"). Yet Yorke's quivering vocals remain the band's emotional focal point, and in acknowledging the fact that this post-9-11 world has rendered his brooding commonplace, "Hail to the Thief" looms large as a potent reflection of the world in which he sulks.